Feature Stories

Living in urban areas can offer convenient access to work, commerce, and culture, and perhaps that’s why more than half of the people on Earth call those places home now, with the number expected to rise to two-thirds by 2050, according to a report from the United Nations. Read about how urban microclimate impacts water use, energy use, and pollutant transport, as well as the overall comfort and well being of the inhabitants of urban areas.

Historically, the influenza A virus has been responsible for millions of deaths worldwide each year. The persistence of seasonal H1N1 and H3N2 strains costs between 3,000 and 49,000 lives annually in the United States alone. Influenza pandemics, or global circulations of highly transmissible and pathogenic viral strains, have occurred four times in the past century.

Eric Dawson is a senior biology student at UT Austin and a three-year TACC intern. He was also the team leader of UT's Student Cluster competition team. Here, he discusses how working on projects for The iPlant Collaborative through TACC has impacted his college experience and future career plans.

Last month, a group of 20 plant scientists from the U.S. and Europe convened at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin to participate in the Arabidopsis Information Portal (AIP) Developer’s Workshop.

Researchers in the Parallel Algorithms for Data Analysis and Simulation (PADAS) group at UT Austin are integrating mathematics, computer science and applications, and then scaling them to supercomputing platforms to develop scientific software. Using resources at TACC including Stampede and its Xeon Phi coprocessors, Lonestar and Maverick, the team is working to impact many areas in health and science.

Hummingbirds can hover so well they seem to float in mid-air. With the help of a supercomputer, Vanderbilt University mechanical engineer Haoxiang Luo has fleshed out some of the secrets of how hummingbirds hover, flight that's more similar to that of an insect than the typical bird.

Cancer radiation treatment is a tricky process. Medical researchers and physicians must walk the delicate line of delivering just enough radiation to kill tumors while sparing surrounding healthy tissue.

Bacteria inside your mouth drastically change how they act when you're diseased, according to research using supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Scientists say these surprising findings might lead to better ways to prevent or even reverse the gum disease periodontitis, diabetes, and Crohn's disease.

Recent published research in the Journal of Clinical Investigation demonstrates how changes in dopamine signaling and dopamine transporter function are linked to neurological and psychiatric diseases, including early-onset Parkinsonism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

For all the money and effort poured into supercomputers, their life spans can be brutally short – on average about four years. So, what happens to one of the world's greatest supercomputers when it reaches retirement age? If it's the Texas Advanced Computer Center's (TACC) Ranger supercomputer, it continues making an impact in the world. If the system could talk, it might proclaim, "There is life after retirement!"